Trainer Aidan O'Brien looked on in awe as his Australian import Starspangledbanner routed the field in the Golden Jubilee on the final day of Royal Ascot.The Group One contest on Saturday boasted challengers from six nations, including Australia, Hong Kong and the United States, but none could live with the sheer pace of the Irish raider, who broke the track record.O'Brien, usually calm personified, was visibly astonished when the four-year-old led from the start under Johnny Murtagh, grabbing t

Trainer Aidan O'Brien looked on in awe as his Australian import Starspangledbanner routed the field in the Golden Jubilee on the final day of Royal Ascot.

The Group One contest on Saturday boasted challengers from six nations, including Australia, Hong Kong and the United States, but none could live with the sheer pace of the Irish raider, who broke the track record.

O'Brien, usually calm personified, was visibly astonished when the four-year-old led from the start under Johnny Murtagh, grabbing the grandstand rail.

The pair never saw another horse, beating Society Rock by an easy 1-3/4 lengths.

Kinsale King, trained in America by Irishman Carl O'Callaghan, was a head behind in third.

"What can I say? I've never had anything like this fella before," said O'Brien, who has trained 36 Classic winners in Britain and Ireland.

"I was hoping a horse was going to lead him today, but when you've got a horse that can run so fast, who's going to lead?"

Starspangledbanner was formerly trained in Australia by Leon Corstens, who prepared him for Group One wins in the Caulfield Guineas and Oakleigh Plate and was transferred to O'Brien's Ballydoyle yard in Ireland for the 2010 European season.

If the performance was impressive, it was also an unexpected one for most of the 76,554 crowd.

The four-year-old fluffed his lines at his first British start in May, finishing fifth in a Group Two race at York.

But since that inauspicious debut, O'Brien's new stable star had worked fluidly and begun to show signs of his true ability.

"Tom Curtis checks our times, it's a specialist job, but when he saw the times earlier this week, he had to check our GPS systems were right," O'Brien said.

"The horse goes past me in the jeep in the morning like nothing I've never seen. I'm not trying to hype him, but they are the facts. He's just one of those very unusual beasts."

In winning the Golden Jubilee, Starspangledbanner emulated his sire Choisir who struck for Australia in 2003 having also won the King's Stand Stakes just days earlier.

But plans to run Starspangledbanner in the July Cup may be revised.

"It was the plan for him to go to stud in Australia," said John Magnier, head of Ireland's Coolmore Stud and part-owner of the winner.

"Obviously we will now have to see what the other owners want to do with him.

"If he is to go to stud he would pretty well have to give up racing now."

Should Starspangledbanner make it to Newmarket on July 9, there will be a queue there to take him on, headed by Society Rock and Kinsale King.

O'Callaghan was very keen to re-oppose O'Brien once more with his Dubai Golden Shaheen hero, saying: "July here we come!

"Third is like a win for us. He's never run in the country, never run on turf, and never run in a straight line, so we're happy.

"That performance will tighten him up a bit for Newmarket. We will take it one step at a time."